Finding locations

Finding your ideal location.

The best way of finding out about an area is to visit it. Some places have very different styles even if they’re only a street or two away from each other. You should explore on foot ideally as it’s easier to be nosey as you’re walking about, rather than risking bumping into something in your car if you’re paying more attention to the houses and neighbourhood than the actual road.

There are some useful tools out there and Rightmove has some great features on its site. You can search by area and if you view the map version you see the boundary drawn out. This is often good for seeing where areas end. You can do this by typing in the name of a village or suburb into the search box.

You can also search by postcode and this is useful if you know the postcode of a particular property on a street. You can then search by increasing the distance from this point in various increments up to 40 miles. Obviously the wider the search the more properties will show up.

One of the most useful features of the Rightmove website is to be able to draw your own search area on a map. First go to the general area you want to narrow down and click on the options for drawing a shape. You can draw by making a series of points which makes it easy for including or excluding roads. You can draw and save many different maps making it easy to have several searches set up. You can also opt for having an email of new properties sent to you every so often. This makes it easy to keep up with the properties coming on the market.

Sometimes you don’t know the postcode of a particular area, but you can track this down using either a general search on the internet or using something like the Royal Mail postcode finder service.